Reviews by Colette Lardner-Browne
Jersey Boys
Colette Lardner-Browne
Jersey Boys the musical, a recipient of numerous awards including a Tony and an Olivier, has been wowing audiences around the world since it premiered on Broadway in 2005. The show, which ran in ...
6 years ago
Jersey Boys
The Habit of Art
Colette Lardner-Browne
You could say that Alan Bennett’s 2009 play-within-a-play, The Habit of Art, came home when it opened at the Oxford Playhouse last night.
It is set in an appropriately higgledy-piggledy rehearsal ...
6 years ago
The Habit of Art
The Lieutenant of Inishmore
Colette Lardner-Browne
In
the late 1990s and early noughties, Martin McDonagh quickly earned a reputation
as an edgy dramatist with the quick-fire success of his Leenane Trilogy (The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Lonesome ...
7 years ago
The Lieutenant of Inishmore
The Commitments
Colette Lardner-Browne
The cast's energy in its final (staged) 'encore', when The Commitments sang the much-awaited 'Mustang Sally', was mirrored in the response of a rump of Oxford's New Theatre's audience who danced in ...
8 years ago
The Commitments
As You Like It
Colette Lardner-Browne
It occurred to me this evening that open-air plays are as synonymous with Oxford summers as punting on the Cherwell. The Oxford Shakespeare Company (OSC) has staged the Bard’s (and others') ...
10 years ago
As You Like It
FT Weekend: Oxford Literary Festival
Colette Lardner-Browne
Since starting to work with film at the age of 14, Sally Potter has built an impressive award-winning career as a film maker, and garnered an OBE for services to cinema. As writer/director she is ...
11 years ago
FT Weekend: Oxford Literary Festival
FT Weekend: Oxford Literary Festival
Colette Lardner-Browne
I must ‘fess up’; I am a huge fan of Lord Melvyn Bragg, but had not read any of his novels up until now. However, I have been in awe of his cultural cachet and expansive intellect from ...
11 years ago
FT Weekend: Oxford Literary Festival
FT Weekend: Oxford Literary Festival
Colette Lardner-Browne
The Bodley Medal, an award first created in 1646, is presented by the Bodleian Libraries to ‘individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the worlds of culture, learning, science and ...
11 years ago
FT Weekend: Oxford Literary Festival
FT Weekend: Oxford Literary Festival
Colette Lardner-Browne
Emeritus Professor John Carey entertained a packed audience at the Blue Boar Theatre at the first of this year’s Oxford Literary Festival events. He certainly does not come across as a stuffy ...
11 years ago
FT Weekend: Oxford Literary Festival
The Pitmen Painters
Colette Lardner-Browne
Is education and culture the preserve of the privileged classes or can it be really open to all? Lee Hall (renowned for penning Billy Elliot) doesn’t explicitly ask these questions, but ...
11 years ago
The Pitmen Painters
Volcano
Colette Lardner-Browne
Noel Coward, one of Britain’s most popular twentieth-century writers, is most commonly associated with plays set in England, such as Hay Fever, Blithe Spirit and This Happy Breed, as well as ...
12 years ago
Volcano
Lady Windermere's Fan
Colette Lardner-Browne
If you like the Wildean brand of ‘witticism’ and have a free night this week, look no further than the Studio Theatre Club’s production of Oscar (Fingal O’Flahertie Wills) Wilde’s first ...
14 years ago
Lady Windermere's Fan
Wyrd Sisters - Directors Cut
Colette Lardner-Browne
In 1991 Stephen Briggs was the first to adapt and stage one of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books. The choice for the first adaptation (16 more have followed) was Wyrd Sisters. That adaptation, ...
16 years ago
Wyrd Sisters - Directors Cut
Hans Christian Andersen's Magical Tales
Colette Lardner-Browne
The Little Match Girl, The Emperor's New Clothes, The Princess and the Pea, The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen, The Tinder Box - and many more!The fabulous Mirror Tent, once again, is the lynchpin ...
16 years ago
Hans Christian Andersen's Magical Tales
Julius Caesar
Colette Lardner-Browne
Last night, Nova Theatre, a new star in Oxford’s theatrical firmament, revealed its glorious talent to an enchanted crowd at the Old Fire Station. A dynamic, gender-reversed, pacey production of ...
7 years ago
Julius Caesar
